At the Nashville meet-up I had nice conversation with Scott Wills and told him about something I was doing to check possible copyright issues with tracks. He thought other authors might be interested in it as well:

As a writer I am sure we all have fears of hearing something and inadvertently copying it. What I have started doing is taking my tracks and creating a video with 9 or 10 tracks with a black screen or logo and loading the video up onto youtube. This causes the tracks to be run through their watermarking and recognition program and it will alert you if you have anything with potential issues. It appears to work pretty well. I have only had one track get flagged for possible issues – it was the Star Spangled Banner (which is in the public domain). There were arrangements that were copyrighted but since the song shared the same melody it was flagged as a possible violation.

It is not perfect but it might catch possible issues before a file is uploaded.

That’s a great idea! It’s always in the back of my mind that there’s the risk of inadvertantly creating a work that’s too close to somebody else’s. I didn’t think there was anything that could be done about it, but at least this is a good step towards CYA .

Thanks for sharing the tip!

Just curious – has this ever happened to anyone here? E.g. somebody contacts you saying you copied one of their existing works?